


How to Sacrifice your Lamb

by tysonrunningfox



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: F/M, and astrid is the mysterious vigilante, but hiccup is the damsel, hmm the brattiest 18 year old hiccup ever, sacrifice au, vigilantestrid, what if hiccup never shot down toothless?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 22:12:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18214334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tysonrunningfox/pseuds/tysonrunningfox
Summary: When a mysterious ship makes the dragons disappear, at first it's a blessing, until the ship attacks with weaponry that Berk doesn't understand, driving it to the brink of disaster.  Only then are the hard choices made.  Sacrifice AU.





	1. Chapter 1

This is Berk.

Or maybe at this point, this _was_ Berk is more appropriate.

Hiccup barely recognizes the burning village around him, despite living here his entire life. It turns out that all houses look the same after being hastily rebuilt four or five times over the past year. Right now the similarity is even more striking, as all houses definitely look the same when they’re on fire.

“Incoming!” Gobber leaps from the forge window just as a toppled torch crashes through the roof, nearly crushing him.

“You ok?” Hiccup helps him up, or tries to, it’s more like Gobber uses him as a crutch and nearly breaks his arm in the process.

“What the Hel are you doing outside?” Gobber tries to swipe the back of his head but Hiccup ducks, wiping ash from the burning forge off of his sleeve and jogging backwards. He trips on a spear and catches himself with a hop.

“I was coming to help—”

“You’re looking for that Night Fury again,” Gobber calls after him as he darts between two smoldering houses and up the hill to where he left his bolo canon during the last raid. “If your father finds out—”

“He’ll be mad at me either way,” Hiccup grumbles to himself, gulping in the fresh air above the smoke and looking out at the ship in the bay. It’s there like it always is the day after the dragons give them a break. The first time the skies were clear, his dad thought it was a miracle, but the ship appeared the next night, lobbing flaming torpedoes at them without warning.

Hiccup positions himself behind his invention, drumming his fingers on the sides where the edges of the boards he used are burned and crumbling. One thing about the village burning down so often is an abundance of scrap parts, not that his dad is happy about him taking them for something ‘nonessential’.

Everything is nonessential these days, Hiccup most of all.

“Now where are you…” He squints at the hazy air above the burning village, looking for the telltale midnight streak. When the ship is here, the dragons aren’t, except for one. “Come on…”

He feels the breeze before he hears the shout, carried on the smoky wind.

“Night Fury, get down!”

The blue lightning blast hits his house dead on and the roof catches instantly, orange flames licking down the walls and sending another gust of hot air up the side of the mountain. The ship moves then, rushing the shore, and Hiccup cringes at the sound of steel as a few Vikings clash with the invaders in the surf. One falls and he looks away, trying to count the numbers they’re up against.

He only ever sees one, and the same is true now when the Night Fury circles back around, aiming for the ship and hitting its sail, the blast going straight through and lighting Berk’s last dock on fire. The invader jumps back in their ship and it beats a jagged line towards the horizon, disappearing in the dark haze.

One wall of his house falls inward with a crash that sends the front panel skidding down the hill and Hiccup shakes his head. If he’d stayed inside like his dad told him to, he’d be flattened and on fire right now.

Shit, his dad thinks he’s flattened and on fire right now.

He scrambles back down the hill as fast as he can, stopping to cough when he hits the wall of smoke and ash at the tree-line. By the time he gets to his house, his dad is digging through the rubble, tossing a full windowpane over his shoulder like it’s a dragon scale.

“Uh, I think your Nadder head is toast, dad,” Hiccup picks up half a schematic that blows against his shins, “but maybe we can salvage your prize axe—”

“Hiccup,” his dad stops short, wasting no time on relief and launching straight into a world famous Stoick the Vast rage, the fire in his eyes matching the small spark catching in his beard. “You were supposed to stay inside!”

“If I had, that wouldn’t have worked out very well for me,” he gestures at the ruins of their house, “I know I’m a little scrawny for your taste, but I do enjoy being three-dimensional.”

Hiccup is never in more trouble than when he’s right.

“Is this a joke to you?” His dad booms, stomping across the remains of a bed or a chair, the charred wood fleeing in front of his furious feet. “Don’t I have big enough problems without losing track of you every five minutes?”

“Sure, Dad, next time I’ll stay put.” He steps onto the fallen wall and then instantly jumps off when it’s scaldingly hot through the soles of his boots. “Right under the smoldering remains of our house—”

“Stop! Just stop! This isn’t something you can talk your way out of,” his dad isn’t tall enough to pick him up by the collar of his shirt anymore, but it looks like he’s about to try and Hiccup stumbles back, “you can’t follow the simplest orders—”

“Get smashed, sure, I could have followed that, I don’t remember you saying it though—”

“If you spent as much time trying to help the village as you do trying to undermine me,” he sighs, anger rushing out of him like a slap Hiccup would have preferred, “maybe I could trust you. You’re eighteen, Hiccup, I keep waiting for you to outgrow this—”

“You just gestured to all of me.”

“Maybe I did,” he bends down and picks up a charred sword out of the pile of rubble, “maybe this is all there is.”

Hiccup blinks back a tear he can blame on smoke, but his dad isn’t looking, “is this a good time to tell you that your beard is on fire?”

00000

The morning after the attack, the village wakes up to a pair of monstrous nightmares sneaking away with about half the flock of sheep Berk has left, and Hiccup’s dad takes Gobber and a few others to Freezing to Death to get some answers. If Berk is the only place dealing with the mysterious boat, it’s probably a foreign threat and given how the supply stores are looking after the last attack, it’s probably time to take action.

Stoick the Vast says goodbye without a vast amount of fanfare, just a reminder that Spitelout is in charge and a frosty look at Hiccup, telling him to behave.

It’s a pleasant surprise that Snotlout doesn’t start his usual bragging about being acting heir, or at least it is until Hiccup realizes why. Snotlout looks scared. The twins do too. Fishlegs would be terrified if he weren’t in the glorified tarp acting as a healer’s hut, having burns treated from his house falling down on him.

He stayed inside and look at where that got him.

Hiccup hates how the thought isn’t as triumphant without his dad around to react to it.

After a couple of days of rebuilding while fending off pesky Terror attacks around the edges of the village, the skies clear again and the boat appears on the horizon. Hiccup barely has time to get up the hill to his canon before the torpedoes start, somehow more destructive without houses to take the brunt of them. The night fury makes one appearance, chipping a helmet horn off of the statue in the bay, but it’s too far away for Hiccup to take a shot.

The healer’s tent is full the next day and Spitelout calls a partial council meeting in what’s left of the hall, fading sunlight streaming through a hole blown in the roof. There’s plenty to burn though, and Hiccup tosses a scrap of wood on the fire when he walks in, staring at the row of half occupied council seats. Snotlout is next to his dad but it’s not clear whether he’s hiding or planning on voting, so it’s not quite jealousy that makes Hiccup step up to one of the other empty chairs.

Maybe it’s what his dad said about helping the village. He can do that if it doesn’t mean following arbitrary orders that don’t make sense or adapt. And if he proves he can help, maybe his dad will stop with the orders.

“We’ve tried fighting,” Spitelout starts, his voice more of a cornered growl than a boom.

“We haven’t really.” Someone in the audience calls back from an improvised bed sheet stretcher.

“We’ve tried fighting,” Hiccup, for the first time in his life, mimics Spitelout. He gestures at the bandaged group in the back corner of the damaged hall, “it didn’t work out.”

Hiccup doesn’t flinch when the crowd rejects—no riots at—his contribution. He’s used to it, it’s fine.

“Of course Hiccup doesn’t want to fight.”

“He probably has some invention he thinks will save us.”

“Yeah, what’s your bright idea Hiccup?”

Some of the highlights break through the general sounds of a mob approaching violence in the wrong direction and Hiccup almost wishes he hadn’t said anything. Almost, because if he hadn’t, people would have forgotten he was here entirely and that’s never a comfortable sensation, but he still really wishes he’d thought of two things to say before opening his mouth.

“Umm…”

“Um,” Spitelout shakes his head, “the future chief of Berk—“

“Hey, right now I’m future chief of Berk,” Snotlout puffs his chest out and it makes him look shorter. Spitelout ignores him entirely but he continues anyway, “and I have an idea.”

“That’s a first,” Hiccup snorts.

“It’s more than you have,” Snotlout jabs his finger at Hiccup and looks at the crowd for a second, paler when he notices they’re all looking at him. Hiccup would tell him he should have thought through speaking if he thought Snotlout was capable of that kind of mental exercise.

“Well go ahead then, dazzle us all with your brilliance.”

“Fine, I will.” Snotlout clears his throat, “I saw the person from that ship last night and it’s a girl.”

“You need to get your eyes checked, boy-o, there’s no way a woman is responsible for this kind of destruction,” Spitelout rolls his eyes.

“No, it wasn’t a woman, it’s a girl. A hot girl,” Snotlout grins, “so what if we sent me out there to talk some sense into her? You know, lay the groundwork for a long and thriving _friendship_.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me.” Hiccup shrugs.

“He does have a point,” Spitelout mimics Hiccup’s sentiment for the first time ever and Hiccup begins to seriously question his choices.

“Really?” Snotlout stops short, confused by the approval like he is about everything.

“Well, yeah, you’d be getting murdered on a boat and we all wouldn’t have to listen to you anymore—“

“You won’t be going anywhere, son,” Spitelout claps his hand on Snotlout’s shoulder, “it’s not a woman. But sending someone out there as a peace offering is something we haven’t tried.”

“What, like a human sacrifice?” Hiccup has never so acutely wished for his dad’s uniquely demoralizing brand of common sense.

“Take Ruffnut,” Tuffnut offers from the front row, “I always knew having a spare Thorston would come in handy.”

“We aren’t sending a human sacrifice out there, that’s insane,” Hiccup tries but the crowd turns on him again, yelling about how he was the one who thought fighting wasn’t working in the first place. A particularly witty villager suggests putting him in a dress and sending him out there and Hiccup feels a flicker of the desperate fear driving everyone else into such a flurry.

The village is gone, there’s not much time to rebuild before winter and their numbers are dwindling.

Hiccup has never so acutely wished for his dad.

“What’s in it for me?” Ruffnut asks and he can see that she’s scared too, but the dangerous kind of scared people become when presented with a difficult solution to an overwhelming problem. The brave kind of scared that Hiccup sees but doesn’t feel. The kind of scared that makes him feel like less of a Viking.

He’s always the problem, never the solution.

“You get to be the human sacrifice,” Snotlout pouts, equal parts relieved and miffed to be out of the spotlight, “you get to talk down the invaders and save the village and be a hero and get la—“

“Maybe he’ll let you shoot that huge canon thing he has,” Tuffnut shrugs and Ruffnut considers that for a second.

“And it’ll save everybody?” Ruffnut looks around, “I mean, I’ve never been one to get in the way of mass destruction but…”

“They got our yak, sis, I think…it’s ok to say this has gone pretty far.”

“Ok, I’ll do it.”

“You volunteering makes the next part easier, but as Acting Chief, I will say it wasn’t explicitly necessary.” Spitelout wields his iron fist like a hammer instead of dragging it behind him like an anchor.

The next night the skies clear and Spitelout orders Ruffnut to the splintered end of the practically still smoldering dock in a white linen dress with her hands tied behind her back, arms bound to her sides. Watching from the shore at the base of the dock with the sunset around her, it reminds Hiccup of a wedding, a thought that makes his stomach churn with the desperate need to stop it.

Someone should be saying no. Someone should do something.

He’s known Ruffnut his entire life and the thought that the village can cast her out into something dangerous so easily makes him wonder what else they would do. He knows their survival is in the balance but that doesn’t make this any less surreal or uncomfortable.

The ship appears from the east, gliding across the water, its sail patched from the Night Fury blast with what looks like a cloak of some kind, rough edges of the stitches flapping in the wind and showing small gaps that make it wobble. The invader walks back to the canon, aiming it upwards and Hiccup flinches prematurely, waiting for the blast, but the invader pauses, evidently spotting Ruffnut.

The ship turns instantly, heading straight for the end of the ruined dock. The invader jumps off, landing silently, deftly twirling an axe and pushing a heavy furry hood off of their head.

Her head.

She’s beautiful and furious and young, her cheek smudged with soot as she glares blue fire at the looming crowd and raises her axe over her head, aiming it at Ruffnut’s back. Then all Hiccup can think of is blood on linen and Spitelout’s silence. He must have known it could go this way and he went ahead with it, putting anyone else’s neck on the line before his own.

That’s not what chiefs do.

“Wait!” He yells, stumbling forward along the dock and wishing he were faster. Stronger. More. Anything that would get him there before that axe falls. “Wait! Don’t hurt her!”

The invader looks at him incredulously, glare softer but no less bright in its confusion. He holds his hands out, for once glad about how fierce he doesn’t look. He’s not a threat, he’s just a token, a hope, the future of Berk spent strangely and too soon.  

Hey, maybe this is finally a situation he can talk his way out of.  

“Take me, just…kill me and be done with it. I’m the chief’s son, you don’t have to involve anyone else. Kill me and you win.”

Her eyes dart between him and the looming crowd behind him, and he has enough time to realize that she’s smaller than her presence, shorter than him and the same age. Her hands are rough and sure around the handle of her axe but the curve of her cheek is soft, fragile under an expression carved from granite.

She doesn’t look like a sadist, not that Hiccup knows many sadists other than apparently Spitelout. He hopes she’ll make this quick.

The whispers in the crowd behind them rise, the theme becoming clear in a rasp of steel, the menacing sound of swords being unsheathed. She’s just one girl and she’s off her ship, the wicked ship that’s dealt so much damage.

She raises her axe, something apologetic flashing across her eyes as she brings it down and everything goes dark.


	2. Chapter 2

When Astrid committed to taking over the war her parents abandoned, she didn’t think it’d be easy. She didn’t think she’d survive, even, in the end, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was taking out the last Night Fury before Grimmel could find it and the nest of dragons along with it. With one more nest of dragons, who knows how much further Drago could extend his empire, how many more people he could rule with an iron fist.

Before she stole one of Grimmel’s newest skiffs, she had the quest all planned out in her head. Go north, find Berk, because it was the only northern settlement she had even secondhand knowledge of, track the Night Fury, kill it and then probably be captured and killed for taking Grimmel’s glory away from him. Again, that was fine with her, she planned on it almost. It’s easier to act in the face of fear if death is an inevitability, anyway.

But never in her planning or stealing or the last weeks of sailing and fighting and chasing one slick oily shadow against the stars did she ever think that she’d end up with a hostage.

Or no, it’s more like a sacrifice, because apparently Berkians are absolute barbarians. No wonder her parents left. No wonder why they’re fine living under Drago’s rule, at least Drago only throws tied up criminals into the sea, not into their enemies’ arms.

That girl…if Astrid had been a real enemy, it makes her sick to think of what might have happened. Would have happened. If she’d been Grimmel…

Getting here first is a better and more complicated idea than ever.

She’d known who the chief’s son was even before he was flinging himself in front of her axe as she tried to cut the girl free. She’d seen him running from the fight, hiding in the woods with the other children even though he’s obviously too old for that behavior. Maybe Berkians got soft when they decided one of them could be exchanged for a cause.

But still, there was something genuine in his face. Chiefly in a way that never stands up to Drago’s force, dangerously noble in front of what he obviously thought was his death.

That thought soured her stomach a bit, she hasn’t killed any of them on purpose. She knows there have been casualties, and she’s felt her axe cut deep when a few got too close to disabling her ship as she tried to aim for the Night Fury, but she’s not cold blooded. She knows she’s not because she felt ice in her veins for a second when she saw the girl, her age or younger, tied and offered up at the end of a destroyed pier. There was a second where she wondered how many she could take before she went down, but that wouldn’t have helped anyone, in the end.

By the time she’s at her nightly hiding place in the bog on the island over, she’s starting to get nervous. The chief’s son hasn’t moved, his hastily tied form slumped against the ships railing, head lulled to the side. Knocking him out was the only thing she could think to do as it dawned on her how unintimidating Berk would find her now that they know she’s sacrifice shaped. If she has the chief’s son, they won’t figure out a way to blow her boat out of the water, not that it appears they have that kind of technology.

But she didn’t realize how skinny he was when she hit him. His gesture was bigger than his scrawny shoulders and potentially the thickness of his skull, and she hit him harder than she probably had to. He was floppy as she tied him up, dead weight disconcertingly light in her panic, but that was hours ago. Shouldn’t he have moved by now?

Did she just kill a hostage? A hostage she didn’t even want? A hostage she’s only calling a hostage because the phrase ‘human sacrifice’ makes her sick to her stomach and she hasn’t had enough to eat in the last few days to risk throwing anything up.

She knew she’d be in over her head, but after weeks failing to even touch that Night Fury, this is bordering on too much to handle.

Maybe she should just throw the body overboard and head back home. She doesn’t like the idea of Berk catching her with the chief’s son dead, or worse, without him entirely. Sure, Grimmel will torture her for information, but at least she knows his methods and they aren’t tying her up and leaving her like an offering on an altar.

The branch of a tall pine tree scrapes against the mast of her ship and it almost sounds like a groan.

She doesn’t know he’s dead yet, she should check before making any decisions.

She squats in front of him on the gently bobbing deck, keeping time with the slow rising tide. The way his head is lolling to the side makes the tendons in his skinny neck stand out and the sharp line of his jaw casts a shadow that sways in time with the boat. She doesn’t see a pulse, and while she’s not afraid of anything anymore, if he’s cold and rigid, she doesn’t necessarily want to touch him.

Astrid swallows hard, remembering the way Uncle Finn’s hand locked tight around hers hours after he took his last breath, and reaches out to grab the boy’s chin and turn his head upright.

His neck moves easily, but his skin is cold under her fingers. He could have just barely passed, she supposes, a couple of hours unconscious on rough seas finishing what the flat of her axe started. There’s a slightly raised knot on his head where she hit him, and the flush of purple at his hairline is encouraging. If his skin is bruising, his heart must have at least pumped for a while, right?

His expression is relaxed, peaceful even, long eyelashes casting shadows on his freckled cheeks. She holds her fingers under his long, straight nose and tries to see if he’s breathing. He might be, but that could be sea air too, messing with her clammy fingers’ senses. She can’t see his narrow chest rising and falling, but she tied him with his knees nearly up against it so that he couldn’t fight if he came to when her back was turned.

He doesn’t look like a fighter though. He didn’t come at her with a weapon but an offer to take someone else’s place. Maybe she just gave him what he asked for, but she hopes not. That would be inconvenient at best.

She presses two fingers against his pulse point and his cool skin gives slightly under her touch as she waits. The first beat is faint, and she adjusts her grip on his cheek. The second is stronger, revealing a slow but steady thrum, and she sighs with relief.

“Valkyrie,” the dry-throated whisper almost blends with the rustle of pine branches and it takes Astrid a second to look up at his face. His eyes are open and trained on her face, green even in the moonlight and trying to make sense of too much at once.

She’s too aware of her hand on his face and drops it, wincing internally as his chin falls forward into his chest. He tries to rub the top of his head and his bound wrists catch where they’re tied to his feet, and the reality of having a tied-up boy—a tied-up _human sacrifice_ —on her boat, secured with her knots, rests on her shoulders like another great weight. Like all the others, she’s momentarily unsure she can hold it.

She watches him for a second, his fidgeting slowing as he leans his head back against the railing and blinks slowly, staring right through her even as he obviously fades back into unconsciousness. It’s not cold enough to worry about him freezing overnight, no matter how skinny he is, and she uses that reassurance to tuck herself into her bedroll and force herself to sleep.

00000

“Hey.”

Astrid jolts awake at the strange voice, spinning to her feet and grabbing her axe from under her pillow, ready to swing by the time she’s on her feet.

Her hostage is awake. As much as she’s aware of the absolute truth that situations don’t solve themselves, maybe part of her was kind of hoping he’d die by morning. Or escape, except then he’d go back to Berk and tell them where she hides between raids and…fuck. Her stomach growls and she holsters her axe, turning to the small fishing kit next to him and taking out a hook and line.

“Sorry,” the boy apologizes, voice nasal and rough, and she has no idea how to respond, so she doesn’t. “I didn’t mean to umm, scare you.”

She casts the line over the side of the boat where she saw some minnows lurking the other day. If she could get a few minnows, maybe she could get something bigger further out and wouldn’t have to worry about fishing so frequently.

“Not that I think I’m particularly scary, or that you look scared,” he continues, unprompted, stopping only to cough into his shoulder. She doesn’t know how to offer water to a hostage, she doesn’t know how to do any of this.

Apparently, she doesn’t even know how to hunt dragons, which is the one thing she was relying on working in this entire scheme.

“I don’t know why you’d be scared, especially since you, you know, conked me out so efficiently.” He groans, “I really thought that was a one-way ticket to Valhalla.”

She opens her mouth to ask if that’s what she’s supposed to do with a human sacrifice or to tell him that if she’d wanted him dead, he’d be dead, but nothing comes out but half a croak. She doesn’t remember the last time she talked to anyone. It must have been the northern markets a month ago when she was trying to trade for supplies, but everyone could feel the shadow of impending doom on her ship and avoided her entirely. Since then it’s been stealth, and she ties the fishing line off to get her water skin and take a deep drink.

He watches her, eyes flicking between the water that drips down her chin and her face as she drains the skin. He swallows hard and guilt wells alongside her frustration that he’s somehow now her problem.

“Where are you going?” He calls after her as she jumps off of the stern, tumbling easily on the moss and rolling back to her feet to jog silent down the shallow hill to the nearby spring.

Splashing her face helps her wake up a little more and she doesn’t so much miss the grogginess as she resents taking in the entire situation. Another mouth to feed when she’s barely feeding herself. Someone to keep quiet until…how many ways can this go?

If she keeps Berk’s heir until she kills the Night Fury, she supposes she can drop him back home, as unharmed as possible, and head back south like she’d planned. The problem with that is being followed. If he figures out enough about her, Berk could track her down and lead Drago and Grimmel right to that nest of dragons without even knowing.

She could keep Berk’s heir until she kills the Night Fury and then kill him before heading back.

And again, she could kill him now.

She takes one last deep drink from the spring, scrubbing the back of her neck with clear water and collecting the full skin to take back to the boat. If she does end up killing him, it won’t be by dehydration. If she has to make that decision, she’ll make it.

He doesn’t know how stupid he is to be relieved to see her, but she hands over the water without telling him that, scowling when he spills about half of it on himself trying to drink with bound hands. His left foot hovers in its ropes above the deck when he hands the empty skin back to her and she takes it, hanging it on a hook by her bedroll and returning to her still empty fishing hook.

“You know, if you found a worm or something you might have better luck.” He offers, scooting like he’s trying to bring feeling back into his legs. Or maybe like he’s trying to turn and look at her more.

She doesn’t like those big green eyes on her.

More than that she doesn’t like how he doesn’t seem scared. Uncomfortable, maybe, but not scared. He wasn’t scared on Berk either, just desperate, but even that’s gone now. It takes her a minute to decipher his expression, open without being vulnerable, taking in information without giving away secrets.

He’s curious.

Great, she’s definitely going to have to kill him.

“Ok, maybe I started off wrong.” He clears his throat, “I’m Hiccup Haddock, I already told you I was the heir to Berk’s throne, which is probably more important than my actual name, but given the ropes I figure you aren’t going to call me prince, so I should give you another option. Hiccup. My name.” He struggles with the ropes like every weak tug might have a different result. “What’s yours?”

She glares at him, pulling the fishing line back and sliding a chunk of dried fish onto the hook. She’s been saving it for emergencies, but there’s not really enough left to get her through an emergency at this point, so she might as well try the bait idea.

A few minnows in the clear water sniff around it and she jiggles the line, hoping to make the bait look more alive. The fish all swim away and she frowns, turning to stare blankly into the bog.

He’s still staring at her.

“If you don’t want to do names, umm, who are you?” He shrugs a skinny shoulder, bouncing his right boot on the deck with the motion, “a little vaguer, you could give me a title or an alias or—”

He squeaks when she brings her hatchet down, slicing through the rope holding his tied hands and feet together. The release of tension sends him falling back, head bouncing on the deck as he lays flat with a groan.

She’d wanted to leave the rope longer in case she needed to patch sail rigging again, but he can’t look at her while he’s wincing, rolling stiff shoulders and hips.

A minnow has finally taken the bait and she reels it in, dropping it in a seal skin satchel near the fishing kit and putting another piece of jerky on the hook. If nothing else, she could gut and dry the minnows over a low fire later to replenish her jerky supply.

“Where are we?” He’s laying on his side when he gets her attention, propped up on an awkward elbow and stretching his long, skinny neck. “Why do you keep attacking Berk? And if you have a problem with Berk, why didn’t you just kill me back on that dock?”

That’s a question Astrid is asking herself.

“I’m just saying, you don’t seem to be very happy that I’m here. If I’d ever thought about being a human sacrifice, I would have expected a bunch more, I don’t know, nefarious speeches.” His eyes are boring bright holes into the side of her face, “not silently watching you struggle to fish. Also, if I were you, I’d tie another hook into the line, double your chances if you’re going to keep line fishing like that—”

“Shut up!” Her voice comes out louder than she expects, chest deep and rumbling, her hands clenched into fists at her sides.

And he’s still staring. Watching her expressions and figuring her out like a Dragon’s pattern, except instead of looking for a blindspot, it’s like he’s trying to determine how to put himself front and center.

“Ok,” he bites his lip for a second and winces, “but also, have you thought through how I’m going to use the bathroom, because it’s not urgent now but—”

She cuts him off by slamming the door to the tiny, musty cabin below deck. The hay mattress is dusty and rotten, but it still muffles the sound as she buries her face in it and screams, giving it a few punches for good measure.

Like she didn’t have enough going wrong.

 


End file.
